Thomas H. Johnson

Thomas H. Johnson is a partner with Petefish, Immel, Hird, Johnson, Leibold & Sloan, LLP in Lawrence, KS. His practice focuses on business transactions, real estate, and civil and criminal litigation (including divorce and family law) in state and federal courts.

Tom has successfully defended clients in cases involving construction defect issues, real estate and contract disputes, and shareholder disputes, as well as individuals charged in complex federal criminal cases ranging from drug conspiracies to white collar charges of counterfeiting, money laundering, and bank fraud. Tom serves as a Criminal Justice Act (CJA) Panel Attorney for the United States District Court for the District of Kansas and the Western District of Missouri. In 2014, Tom successfully completed the Ross T. Roberts Trial academy put on by the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, which is an intensive trial skills workshop providing over fifty-four hours of trial skill development, and the federal Trial Skills Academy at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California in 2016.

Prior to returning to Lawrence and joining Petefish, Tom practiced law in a wide variety of positions, including a public defender, real estate and business attorney in corporate legal departments of large corporations, and as an expatriate CEO, Country manager and general counsel for a wholly owned Argentine subsidiary of a large US multinational insurance company. Tom is fluent in Spanish and has lived in Bogota, Colombia and Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has also documented many business transactions in Spanish as well as defended many non-English, Spanish speakers in the US court system. Tom earned undergraduate and juris doctorate degrees from the University of Kansas and a master degree from the New School for Social Research in New York.